Although the wild west is not nearly as wild as it once was, the demand for fencing open space continues. A reality confronted by farmers, livestock managers, and more generally property owners seeking to keep animals and the like out of a predetermined area, is that fence installation is particularly time consuming, requiring a crew of three, usually more, and at least one support vehicle from which post may be dispensed in addition to the driving machine, if one may be reliably and accurately used to place posts for fence construction.
Conventional heretofore known post drivers pound posts into the ground as best they can using a reciprocating weight. Past improvements in the post driving art have primarily focused upon resetting or otherwise reestablishing a striking position for a drop hammer or the like. Mechanisms such as hydraulic motors in combination with sprocket chain drive assemblies, for linking the weight or hammer to the motor have been disclosed, as well as various arrangements of hydraulically or pneumatically powered block and tackle assemblies.
Heretofore known machines suffer a variety of shortcomings. For instance, on account of the mass (i.e., weight and physical dimension) of the drop hammer, the frame supporting it for vertical reciprocating movement must be commensurately massive. Similarly, large assemblies and subassemblies are typically necessitated to minimize component damage due to the repetitive and near constant hammer free fall, with components tending to prematurely wear or break. Accurate soil penetrating depth is not easily controlled with such machines, with great potential for post damage by repetitive striking blows from the drop hammer.
If not a more significant concern than the aforementioned shortcomings, at least on par therewith, is the matter of efficiency. Heretofore known post driving machines are plagued with inefficiencies, as numerous starts and stops are necessitated in the operation thereof. First, there is the non-continuous nature of drive hammer operation—half of the “drive” cycle is spent not driving a post (i.e., it is spent returning the drop hammer to a drop height). Next are the inherent subordinate steps associated with post driving, things such as post acquisition, post loading, or post positioning and alignment, etc. These subordinate activities in most cases take as much time, if not more time, as hammering the post into the ground. Needless to say, as the day progresses, the efficiency of the human operators is greatly reduced.
For these reasons, it is advantageous to provide a supremely efficient post driving apparatus and method. More particularly, it is desirable to provide a mechanically efficient post driver capable of receiving a post from an “on board” replenishable supply of posts, which continuously, consistently and accurately places posts, and is further capable of deploying fencing for securing thereto.